There is still a chance left for him not to destabilise Europe and lose everything. Whether he enters Ukraine or gives up without having obtained anything, today Vladimir Putin is checkmated, but he could still choose to come out on top and go down in history as a man of peace and not of war. This is obviously difficult to hope for as he has never been able to play anything but the muscular avenger of the defunct Empire. Rather than trying to invent the Russia of the 21st century, Vladimir Putin has so far only known how to rush backwards into a mythical past, but anything can happen, after all. Necessity can make law and give birth to another Putin who would only need a little audacity to get out of this rut by surprising the whole of Europe, including Russia, and the rest of the world.

The same, but very different: this new Putin could seize the opportunity offered to him by Emmanuel Macron in his dual capacity as President of the Republic and President of the European Council of Ministers for the current semester. Vladimir Putin could bury his conflict with Ukraine by deciding to facilitate the application of the Minsk agreement on Eastern Ukraine. All he would have to do is to lead the secessionists – whom he is arming and financing – to publicly reach out to the Ukrainian authorities, who would in turn be moved to make the gestures necessary for a compromise.

In a few hours and at no cost to himself, Mr Putin would become the solution rather than the problem. He would build trust and, on that basis, he could then offer the European Union, Ukraine and other countries bordering Russia security measures and cooperation agreements that would be advantageous and reassuring enough so that no one could or would want to refuse them.

If Mr Putin could replace the policy of unacceptable ultimatums with a policy of reaching out, if he could contribute to a reinvention of the Helsinki Accords to ensure the stability and prosperity of the continent of Europe, he would not only quickly make people forget the tensions of today. It would also meet with the approval of the Russian people, who dream only of concord and development, the approval of the United States, which do not want to have to return to Europe, and of the 27 states of the Union, which today only want to deepen their unity through joint investments and certainly not to enter into war, even if it is a creeping conflict.

In other words, Vladimir Putin could secure a harmonious end to his reign and lay the foundations for Russia’s transition to the freedoms and democracy to which so many of its citizens aspire. He could enter history through the front door, whereas now he is close to losing big, very big, even.

If he takes his troops across the Ukrainian border, Russia will have to take charge of Ukraine or at least the new regions he will have stripped from it, even though the West will have hit Russia’s pockets by imposing very harsh economic sanctions on it.

The problem will also be not only financial, but also military and political because Vladimir Putin will also have to face a determined resistance that the West will not fail to support with arms, intelligence and money. A new word could thus be imposed in the international political vocabulary, that of “Afghanisation” as Ukraine could quickly become to Russia what Afghanistan had been to the USSR.

Let’s take the hypothesis that the Russian president would not venture into Ukraine after all. This would save many lives, military expenditure and, above all, the threat of continental destabilisation. It would be infinitely wiser, but Vladimir Putin would find himself so humiliated after flexing his muscles so much that his credibility would be as seriously weakened on the international scene as it would be on his domestic scene. He would no longer be sure of being able to maintain his power and he would probably not be able to escape the role of scapegoat, summoned to be accountable for these two decades of unilateral governance.

Between these two terms of the alternative , there are of course the false options of cyberattacks and other shadowy provocations, but they only last for a short time. Basically, Vladimir Putin will quickly have to choose between military adventure and the immediacy of a political fiasco unless…

Unless he rushes without further delay to the emergency exit that is offered to him, takes it and makes a new start for the good of all and for his own good.

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